Jacobean Stage
by ness2
Summary: London, 1590. Jacob Pratt meets Hamish Fleming.
1. Default Chapter

disclaimer: not mine  
rating: R prostitution, swearing, spying, folksong  
genre: a/u. redone as historic fiction  
thanks: Nicky, without whose feedbacks I would have spiked this when it got too much like work, and who gave me a tremendously helpful detailed beta. Remaining errors are all down to me.

warning: this story is not very young-american - it has the same faces in a different combination.

_

* * *

notes:  
In 1590, there were two main court factions in England. The first was the war party - Essex, Southampton, Raleigh, Sidney, among others. They wanted to attack foreign powers, stab them with their shiny swords, steal their treasure, and live on the loot for evermore. They were uncomplicated souls, and by their efforts the British Empire was built. The peace party - Lord Burleigh, his son Robert Cecil, Spymaster Walsingham who reported to them, and others - wanted all the same gains for England but hoped to win them by diplomacy. And spying and bribery. And assassination. Both sides set their henchmen and minions against each other as well as against enemies of the state._

* * *

* * *

Jacob Pratt wriggled into the peacock brocade bodice, his elbow stabbing at an armhole. The gown had become too small since his last growth spurt. The great silk bell of farthingale swung round his hips and legs. It was the finest court dress in the company's wardrobe, rich blue silk embroidered in gold thread with ships in full sail. It once belonged to the late Lady Calhoun herself, acquired by way of her maidservant at (Finn said) great cost. If Jake couldn't fit into it, well, London town was full of hopeful boy players whose one hope would be to seize his place.

_And then what will I do to earn my way? Whore?_

The laces had not been loosened enough, and, halfway in, Jake got stuck, his shoulder almost dislocated. "Bring me my sleeves," he called, muffled. Time was wasting.

There was a costume change between acts two and three - and this rehearsal proved he would never do it in time. Breathless, his face was red when he emerged from the billowing fabric. Fan and gloves and wig were all yet to come. He looked round frantically.

Master Finn himself was acting as tiring-woman. "What do you think?" Finn yanked the bodice tight. Jake breathed more shallowly.

Jake thought his days as a boy player were numbered, and incidents like this did not help. Few boys continued into adult acting... but his ambition to become a full member of the Company was not Master Finn's concern. Glumly, he said, "We need a longer soliloquy from Will." More stage business might cover this delay.

Finn nodded, and started to smooth white lead and vinegar onto Jake's face. Jake told himself to stand like a girl, move differently, get into the role. The constraints of the dress kept him in mind of "Arabella". And was not Will using variants of the name Bella suspiciously often?

"Ryder has been working on a dance - that might hold the crowd," he suggested. He was loath to encourage Ryder's endless ego, but in this case it might be useful. "It's Scottish." _It might ingratiate us with this new innkeeper._ Steven Fleming was a recent business associate, but his enclosed courtyard was good for players, and the Sign of the Oars was excellently situated, just beyond the reach of the Mayor, who hated actors. It would be good for the players to cultivate Master Fleming's friendship.

Once Finn had gotten him ready, Jake hurried along to the head of the stairs, then slowed. Guests walked the dirt and trash of the street into the common parts of the inn, so he had pattens like little stilts on his feet to protect his slippers. It was the devil to balance on the stairs. Frowning, he watched the edge of the steps as he went down.

A body careened into him. "O! Lady, I beg pardon."

Jake looked up, patting himself. _A classic cutpurse trick, that,_ but no, nothing was taken. _It was only the paste jewels for rehearsal, anyhow, but they might be shiny enough to tempt some poor Scot._ The lout was stammering apologies in a Scottish accent. He must be a servant of Innkeeper Fleming. "It's nothing, easy now, I'm not offended," Jake said soothingly.

The boy froze at the sound of his voice, mouth half open like a carp fish.

_It's a pretty lad _Jake thought. _Vivid blue eyes _Smiling, Jake took his chance to whisk past while he was still distracted. "And -" Jake called back mischievously, "I am no lady."


	2. 2

* * *

Jake heaved a profound longsuffering sigh. Directly after rehearsals he had approached Finn's other apprentice, Will Crodsky. While Jake learned to act major roles, wore velvet and memorised long speeches, Will carried a spear, wore red shirts, and died - with a certain noticeable caution that his body fall gently and disposedly to the stage. Finn kept Will for errands, and even more for the plays he wrote, which were good and improving as his stagecraft developed. Will was learning all the workings of the Company, all the backstage politics. However, if he propositioned the daughter of the company's patron, it would ruin Will. He must know this. And it would ruin the Company.

And, it would ruin Jacob Pratt. He had never been one for the study of maidens, himself - save insofar as he needed to imitate them - and he couldn't quite believe anyone was truly imprudent enough to set his cap at Lady Bella Calhoun. Why couldn't Will go for an uncomplicated armful like Mistress Lena? Master Finn would flay him for approaching a woman belonging to their employer.

Jake soberly considered the evidence. True, Will called the name "Bella" in his sleep. But he could be dreaming (impure and messy dreams, and as his bedfellow the mess was annoying Jake) of the princesses of his imagination. Over the last month, Will had written three new plays. The heroines had been Princess Belladonna, Rosibella Fair, and Lady Arabella. All of them were fawningly praised in the text as radiant, with golden hair, all newly come to town from the country, all (Jake sighed again) with parti-coloured eyes.

He had to do something about that, before it all got out of control.

* * *

The good-looking inn servant was huddled over by the knot garden, trimming the box hedge into a Greek key pattern, Jake assumed, or weeding the gravel walk, or some horticultural thing. At the crunch of footsteps, the boy dropped something, seized a knife, and, by the time Jake had reached him, he was industriously gardening. "Fa -oh."

Jake picked up the slate (poorly concealed, in his opinion) from under the greenery. "You thought I was your father?" Even in his russet doublet, Jake resembled nobody respectable or parental. Truly, he was quite content to have it so, otherwise he would not be cultivating the lovelock that swept across his cheek. Nor, he admitted, would a sober man flirt so much. He admired the Scottish boy's furtive sketch. It was a talented study of a horse - so talented, in fact, that he recognised it as Lord Calhoun's gelding.

"This is good."

The boy managed to stammer out a "thank ye, sir."

Shyness was a terrible burden (or so Jacob had been told) but truly, there was no reason for this horror and confusion. "Boy, I should apologise for earlier. You looked on me with horror; are you so new come from the country? Did the Highland goodwives not warn you about the wicked city?" He put warmth into his teasing, wanting the yokel to calm.

"Not horror... uh-" He lost his tongue again. A blush, though, and a sidelong glance under long dark lashes. His eyes were like jewels.

Jake shifted position to draw attention to what he knew full well was an excellent leg. "Come, what's your name, boy?"

"Hamish. Fleming."

Kin to the innkeeper, then. Jake said, making conversation, "Hamish. That's Scotch for James."

The boy looked surprised that he would know that bit of trivia. Somebody must have told him that Londoners despised provincials and foreigners. It was true; Londoners did. But this was a _pretty_ foreigner; and that made all the difference.

_With Glorianna's next heir the Stuart king,_ Jake thought with cynicism, _I misdoubt I'm the only man to show fresh interest in northern affairs._ He did not say so. It was treason to speak aloud of the monarch's death, even though aged Elizabeth would never bear a royal heir.

"I was named for our king," Hamish said. Scotland's monarch was a young man and a newlywed, in stark contrast to England's. He added shyly, "And Jacob. Jacob is James, too."

"It is the Latin form." Jake was pleased by his own show of erudition, and better pleased still by the clue that Hamish had been begging his name of someone since their encounter on the stairs. He had made an impression, hah!

Hamish stayed right where he was, hovering over the weeding, flummoxed and awkward. Was the blush permanent? Jake studied his face, and spoke about the opportunities of London town; the quays unloading persimmons from the Indies, the bustle of streetsellers hawking their wares, the glimpses of her Majesty setting off on progress to eat at her courtiers' expense, the hundreds of bowling alleys and the lads gambling there shockingly. Hamish betrayed a lively interest in his new home once he had gotten over his shyness, and questioned Jake about the districts and people. Jake knew it all. He told Ham about the street sermons at Charing Cross, and the bear-baiting in Southwark.

He found himself offering to show these places to Hamish. Telling him about it all, he wanted to see the town afresh, through Ham's eyes.

At length, he looked again at the sketch. "Do you know, there is fine art to be seen in the town, but you need to know the right people. I could help you. A player is a kind of artist, too; I want to help. I have contacts. Connections. I have connections high up. I could help you get access to fine art in the court collections. Holbein paintings, Durer etchings, miniatures by Hilliard. It's kept in vaults, but I can get you in." _That came out sounding less platonic than I meant it to. I am not desperate; this is friendship only._ Jake sighed. He sounded desperate, to himself.

Hamish gave him an enigmatic look. "Can you."

_O, tush, he's all innocent and village-reared. Why would he assume dirty thoughts?_ Jake reassured himself. Next he would be saying, _I really like you_, and what _I really like you_ meant, all men knew.

* * *

"It is a fact universally acknowledged," Finn said, "that giving heed to a patron's wishes will lead to due rewards." He wanted his prentices to call on Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels, in hopes of a commission for work.

Will could not go; he claimed he was playwriting, but when Jake peered over his shoulder, it was a poem he was at. In rhyming couplets, he developed a metaphysical conceit whereby Lady Bella was a new design of clock escapement, and an escapement, Lady Bella. Jake wondered much at how that would conclude. His own warmth for metaphysical conceits linking modern technology to the muse was partially feigned, but they were undeniably fashionable.

The outmost courtyard in the palace of Whitehall was teeming. All the world was here for a bull baiting. Jake edged past clusters of citizens and servingmen. Over by the steps he saw Hamish among them all, talking to earnestly to a young lord, richly dressed in furs and velvets, who Jake could not name. The stranger was a hunchback, stooped over like an old man, but with an unlined face. His looks told a tale of ill health, but as Jake passed close by - he was compelled to take that path by the press of crowds - he saw dark eyes flashing with intensity.

He could catch no words out of their conversation, though he lingered alertly within earshot. However he had to veer off when he saw Caroline going up to the two. Partly because of being put in mind of the Banks household, he recognised her. She was a new maid of Grace Banks.

He felt a pang for her. His gossip Mistress Lena told him it was a hard life working under the capricious Lady Grace and that several in that household had simply disappeared overnight, leaving no word of where they went and never telling their friends how they fared.

The Master of the Revels did not need Finn's troupe at court this sennight, but told Jake over a glass of wine that a wedding was toward at the house of Lord Stretton. It could be worth offering him a masque. The Strettons (_new money_, thought Jake) were eager to impress, and would be making a valiant show of Master Kyle's nuptials. Jake thanked him sincerely for the information, bowed, and took his leave.

Before he left court, he needed to find out more about the Stretton marriage, so that the entertainment could be tailored to its auditors. Down in the Buttery, he got a dish of eel pie and much good counsel. Kyle Stretton's intended bride was Lady Grace Banks, a lightly soiled dove from amidst Her Majesty's maids of honour.


	3. 3

_

* * *

And so to bed. It had been a long day. He had asked for money from Finn who as his master received wages for his work, and Finn had denied him. Jake was tugging at the points of his hose when Will entered their chamber._

Will was looking uncommonly cheerful. "Young Johnson has loaned me a copy of Arcadia."

It had just been published and was causing a sensation. Will was wild to read it. _Johnson? O, yes, Harry Johnson the student at the Inner Temple. Clement's Inn._ He recognised the young lawyer's family arms stamped on the binding now that he looked closely. Many of the law students were country heirs sent up to achieve urbanity. The inner barristers attended lessons in dance between law lectures. The company performed there regularly.

Stockings at half mast, Jake grabbed the book. All of London was talking about dead, heroic Sidney's magnum opus. It was said to be dizzying and glorious. He opened a page halfway through a sentence. _".. with settled and humble countenance, as a man that should have spoken of a thing that did not concern himself, bearing even in his eyes sufficient shows that it was nothing but Philoclea's danger which did anything burden his heart, far stronger than fortune, having with vehement embracing of her got yet some fruit of his delayed end, he thus answered the.._ The sentence flowed on relentlessly from there, as if the printer eschewed full stops. Jake supposed that with rigorous breath control, this could be read aloud without choking. "There is much in this," he said politely.

"It is a box of jewels," Will said raptly. "It is a poem. It is a New Form of writing."

Jake resumed shimmying out of his garments.

"And," Will said, "it is unfinished."

So Jake had heard. By the month's end, he calculated, St Paul's Churchyard stalls would be glutted with continuations. "Do you intend to conclude it?" If Will worked fast he might find readers.

Will kicked his boots off pettishly. "It would be a fine task. Imagine the praise, the glory, if I did it aright." He frowned at Jake, or his thoughts, and trimmed the candle wick. "I went to the Temple to check the rights of law for a city comedy about gulling fools; I want to write that, too. And Finn has more work for me every time I see him, tinkering at old plays to make them new."

"Finn wants another masque," Jake announced. "There is to be a wedding between Lady Grace Banks and Lord Kyle Stretton. Some dainty allusions to their lineage, the master of the revels suggested."

"Too much, a lifetime of dramas to write to earn my bread, another of dramas I wish to write, I run and run and never enough time. Time is not on my side. I strive to tie it all together and render up an account of my life, but I am terminally... did you say, Lady Grace?"

"Come now; is not your city comedy half done? It is not a court piece, but the Temple may take it, and if not, the groundlings will bring us their pence. You will need to put in fresh jokes and scandal, the jests are stale."

"Lady Grace? Is she the...?"

"The very same." Jake thumped his pillow.

"How am I to make "delicate allusions" to her past?"

"Extensive use of metaphor?" Jake suggested.

Will dragged the pillow from Jake's side of the bed and thumped him with it. Jake only smirked. Kyle Stretton, notoriously ill tempered with poor men, had insulted Jake several times. Jake wished him joy of the notorious lady. He would dance at this wedding with a good heart.

That eagerness to dance was good, for a masque meant dancing. It meant also, for the company, a sustained battle between Will, the wordsmith, and Ryder, the dancemaster, over which of them was to control the shape of their performance. Ryder wanted Will to garland random pretty verses onto a structure based on movement. Meanwhile Will claimed that the story was the skeleton on which all the performance was built. This inspired moonlit monologues to Jake, who was very tired, with digressions about Will's Art and his Muse.

Nervously, then, Jake read Will's newest script.  
_"Helena is here at hand,"  
"And the youth, mistook by me,  
Pleading for a lover's fee."_  
"This sounds good, but, Will, what did you say inspired you?"

"Read on." Will shifted eagerly. He must be pleased with the upcoming passage.

_"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"_ - Will, this is Shakespeare's!"

Will looked sulky. "And what does he do, but pilfer from Holinshed?"

Jake rolled his eyes. "If we stage this, the entire of Burbage's Company will assail us with brawlings, blows, and -"

"How will they know?"

"How will they not?" Jake stared, incredulous. "Do you not plan to perform this play in public? Will, you dolt -"

Will, huffy: "Master Shakespeare might have stolen this piece from me for aught you know."

"I'll swear on an oath that he has not."

"I have no choice," Will protested. He was under more pressure than Jake knew, to supply fresh tales in three acts, with space for music and dance. Jake could never understand. All that was expected of him was a little light mincing, and that he not drop his fan.

"Will, you have naught but choice." Jake pulled up and made himself think. This must be a false plan; Will knew as well as he did that the playgoing audience would recognise and spurn recycled words, and then, riot. "What is this really for?"

"I have choice enough." Very well, then. Will, having had enough sport with his friend, flourishingly produced a bundle of untidy writing. "I have a new piece, so different, the lesser Will himself could not recognise its story."

Jake let "the lesser Will" pass, only raising his brows. He had heard Master Finn and Will pass judgement on Shakespeare before. (Will:"Interesting." Finn:"Thoughtful." Will:"But wrong.") "And then?" Jake prompted.

"I had thought the play within the play could be set in a palatial school, where the sons of wealthy citizens live sheltered, taught by the finest -"

"Like the Children of the Chapel Royal," growled Jake, distracted despite himself. The (niminy piminy chits, to his mind) players of the boy companies were serious rivals to Lord Calhoun's Men. "More refined, pah!" He spat on the floor.

"Taught by the finest," Will repeated, speaking louder over him. "But still, even the most beauteous youth -"

Incredulous, Jake cast a mental eye over the Children of the Chapel Royal, but kept his mouth shut.

"- will find trouble, trouble of the heart-"

"Yes, very fine. Angst and blank verse, some metaphysical figures of language, it sounds well."

"Blank verse and," Will paused impressively, having just had an inspiration of staging, "real rabbits. Troth, I have it. Two youths, of mean and high degree, wander hand in hand through the forest of Arden, expressing their hearts and backstories upon meeting. And lo! we will release live coneys onto the stage to sugar the exposition. It will be irresistible. Jake! Dost think we can persuade the Censor to allow the scene bare-chested?"

_People do not tell others their secrets all at once. If they but would, there would not be this to-do uncovering Will's intent._ "Who will _hear_ this play?" Jake returned to his inquisition.

Will winced. Ah. Here was the meat of it.

"We need another patron."

"Do we?" Jake was all archness. "Has Master Finn told you so?"

Will glowered. "Lord Calhoun may lose favour at Court at any time."

_So may we all._ "Or - mayhap - we may lose favour with him, and gain naught." Jake looked searchingly at him. "Lad, this hunger for the lady Bella is ill conceived. She is as far above you as the moon and you are moonstruck, Will, if you think aught can come of this." He waited for Will to catch at the metaphor and bat it about like a kitten toying with ribbons. _Strike attitudes if you must (I can endure it) but act not so indisceetly._

Will showed less sign of making speeches now that they had come to honesty. "This is more than a love game. Anyroad, a change of patron will not bring the lady within my reach, unless -" He said, "Soon we will have a new patron. I am negotiating."

Jake nodded earnestly. "You would see her more rarely," he pointed out.

"To win her, I need to be more than I am."

This was what Jake had feared - Will's ambition igniting past sense or safety.

"Calhoun has blood and connections, but for all that, he is a follower of greater men."

Jake listened unhappily.

"To become greater, we have to hazard our all, gamble -"

"Gamble," Jake said flatly. He was a worst case scenario man. He could see a dozen unhappy endings to this.

"Jake. Soon we will have a new patron. I am negotiating."

"Who?" Jake asked sharply. This was not a matter for boys: they had too little knowledge of the ebb and flow of court politics.

Will did not understand that some employers were dangerous. Walsingham had extraordinary errands to send his boys on. He dabbled in plots as Will played with stories, and Walsingham's plots never used trick swords to escape an unhappy ending.

Spies hid from everyone, naturally; but Walsingham and Cecil and Essex, they hid from in terror. To tease their prey out, the three chief spymasters used intermediaries. It was grubby work. For instance, even to hint at certain subjects was treason, and carried treason's penalty. But to lure traitors and foreign agents into divulging their plots, and infiltrate their enemies, English agents had to skirt the verges of betraying their own queen. Sometimes, at the end of it, Jake suspected English and foreign were taken up together, and only God, who received all their souls, knew who were the patriots.

_And on this cue, the projector enters,_ thought Jake.

The projector was a spy on spies; he won the confidence of villains and heard confession from the enemies of the state. He cursed God and government where he might be best overheard by foreigners and coaxed evidence of their devilry for the benefit of our lady Queen.

"Walsingham favours actors for the work of spying." Jake said to Will. "As witnesses in the world, a trained memory, the ability to dissemble our true faces, a way of life which brings us in contact with high and low alike, all these things and more."

Will waved his concern aside. "There is nothing amiss. Trust me."

* * *


	4. 4

* * *

It was rehearsal time at the Sign of the Oars. Bickering amongst themselves, (Will and Ryder had irreconcilable plans for the entertainment ahead, and the company were taking sides), nobody noticed the child and his nurse hovering at the edge of the courtyard. Not even the innkeeper's son, leaning on the stable door and staring at the players, noticed them.

The unbreeched little lad, round face under a linen coif, sad blue eyes, stood staring at Jake's kingfisher silk dress. "That was my lady mother's." The child was richly clad himself.

"Master Scout," Jake greeted him uncomfortably. (Lady Bella had coined this name for him when he followed her too closely, as younger siblings will.) He defended his costume. "We have spoke of this afore. Your lady mother would want it so, that her pretties be kept in use and admiration."

The child nodded and swallowed a sob.

That established, Jake had no idea what to say to a child. His own infancy was long past. When the silence lengthened to uncomfortable, he caught Ham's eye. Ham probably liked children. For all Jake knew, he proposed to sire a dozen brats and rear them on porridge and thistles. Jake gave Hamish a pre-emptive glare.

Hamish went and seated himself on a low wall in the weak March sunshine, mending a horse's harness. Jake flashed him a smile but busied himself at rehearsing.

At the forefront of the stage, Finn postured his way through a great piece of iambic pentameters, to the effect that his character (Altonus) thought he had encouragement to woo the beauteous Bellaimee. Jake (the beauteous Bellaimee) was standing right behind him, but this was a soliloquy, and Jake was elaborately not hearing. Ham's attention was repeatedly drawn away from Finn to Jake and Ryder. This, because they were miming flirtation - in broad strokes. Jake bridled his neck and rested his forehead against Ryder's. Ham ought to have been still more impressed by the eye contact of burning intensity; but he had no idea how thoroughly Jake was acting. Jake detested Ryder.

"Stop!" roared Will. "Stop, stop." He jumped up onto the stage and glowered at his short, crossdressing mime artist. "What are you at?"

"I am acting. You have given me no lines to say." Jake spoke with the air of a martyr.

"This-" Will stabbed a forefinger at Finn "-is _his_ big scene."

Jake huffed. "I could play Altonus."

"But, in no way, could I play Bella," Finn pointed out reasonably. He patted his codpiece fondly.

"Bellaimee."

"Bellamiee, quite so." This reminded Finn. "Will, have you considered, for the masque heroine, a name a little more... _Grace_ful?"

Will hunched his shoulders and looked moody.

"More, ah _Graci_ous in style," Finn persevered.

Scenting another rewrite, Jake edged away to join Hamish at the stable door. Ham smiled shyly when they greeted one another. "So, this is a masque."

Jake shook his head. "This is not a masque. Iambic is all wrong for the form; this is what we will perform the week after... we have little time left to decide on what to play at the wedding. It's rhyming couplets we need from Will now. Most of the virtue of a masque lies in costuming and stage business. It is more action, adventure, than a play."

Ham had caught the eagerness in Jake's voice. "Do you enjoy them more?"

Plays could be damnably static, when costs of production led to all the characters telling each other the action offstage. Jake shrugged and scratched under his wig. "Ryder has designed a set of rowboat costumes and we will feign a regatta as we enter. For the rest, a cancelled play of Will's has been adapted. Three lads at the forefront of the players will greet each other warily and formal, dancing a pavane as they do. But, in a moment, they will be swept up by a hurly burly throng of the company entire - a lavolta!" At the blank look, he explained, "(it is a dance with jumping, Ham), and general dancing will break out, in which the wedding guests will take their part. (The standard of verse at a masque is so poor that it is not good to give the audience leisure to critique.)" Jake frowned. At this point, Will had written for the lads to lose their doublets and go half clad. Finn's belief was that of all the ways to capture the wavering interest of the groundlings, costumes were expensive, fine words were cheap, but nakedness was blessedly free. Jake dabbed at a jewel on his sleeve, shaking the pendant crystal so that it sparkled. A scrawny whelp like him looked his best, he felt, with all the glories of velvet and silk that he could contrive. He would remind Will and Finn about the prudishness of the Master of the Revels. "And then," he resumed explaining to Hamish, "two of the three lads (from before) will be ravished away by the mob (to separate them from any wedding guests still dancing), and set down "against their will" in a space representing a marketsquare, where the company shall come, as townsfolk, to point and mock at them." Truly, Jake did not covet these roles. Ryder, for one, could be relied upon to be inspired by ad-lib mocking opportunities.

Ham listened carefully. "But why?"

What was he whying about? Jake looked at him enquiringly.

"Why any of it? Why the kidnap of the naked boys? Why does one boy vanish?" Ham even looked pretty when he was bewildered.

"Reason has no place in a masque," Jake told him patiently. "It is all patterns of movement, colour, and fine music. Will can baste some rhymed couplets onto the case which will give cause for anything he chooses, trust me."

Hamish gestured to the stage. "And Altonus?"

Jake, resigned, said, "Altonus will be our show next week after Lady Grace has passed from bride to matron."

Mistress Lena finally arrived for her nursling. "Who was the child?"

"Lord Calhoun's son," Jake explained to Hamish. "And godson to Sir Walter Raleigh himself."

"The pirate?"

"Hush, say "seaman" only. He's high in favour. We see much of the child, for his nursemaid is mad for the stage."

"Mad for the players, methinks."

Jake grinned, amused. "Good Master Puritan, I pray you -"

"I am no puritan."

Well, that was good tidings. Jake caught Ham's eye, and caught his breath. "Ah. Well." A little intensity there. He swallowed. "I promise I will ever treat Mistress Lena with respectful reserve."

"I will hold you to that vow." Ham sounded close. Very close.

_I may have overestimated his innocence._ Jake considered stealing a kiss; it would be a terrible betrayal of the profession of vagabonds to miss an opportunity.

* * *

Two afternoons later, Jake was sitting in a pub in Deptford, slyly watching a thug out of the corner of his eye. The last thing he wanted was to hear a snarl of "Wot choo looking at?" It would probably be the last thing he heard in life. The stranger's head disappeared into his shoulders without an intervening neck, like a snowman.

He was not, at all, the kind of person Jake would have expected to see talking so long to Will. A pity, that Will assumed Jake did not know who his employer was. He had taken longer than expected to meet with this contact. _Trying to put me off the scent, I suppose_.

This was one of Walsingham's less couth henchmen, barred from most of the decent taverns. Jake assumed that he did not serve as a decrypter of foreign codes, or as an assayor of rumours from abroad. His prominent muscles probably featured in his work, wringing information from terrified men. Will was arrogant, to think he could toy with this and remain in control of his life.

Jake had followed the brute away from Will and across London town, using all the stealth and tricks he possessed so that he was undetected. It had been a long afternoon, and not an amusing one. Ah, to think of all the better places that Jake could have passed these hours, at court, paying attentions to his betters, or back at the inn, paying court to the best looking lad he'd seen outside a theatre. Jake had a notion to bring Hamish with him, were he to obliged to shadow Will's furtive connections again. He could while away these refreshment breaks with flirting.

After all, he had promised to show the breadth of London to the boy. (But showing him the brew of this tavern offered would only give him a poor opinion of English cats.)

* * *

Jake challenged Will. "I know you have hired yourself and the company out to Sir Francis Walsingham. I oversaw your private meeting with his man. I wish you good luck in your wages. Tis said Sir Francis makes a penny do the work of a shilling."

"I made no promises for the company, but what if I had? He is a powerful man, with a sharp mind."

The company was safe, so. Jake was glad of that, but what of Will? "He is sickly, and not young." If Will thought Walsingham near his end, he might withdraw. "Is he not calling on his physician daily? I hear, last week they strapped two live doves to his breast to carry infection away."

Will was unimpressed. He knew as well as Jake did that Walsingham was a roaring hypochondriac, first to take to his bed in times of plague, last to emerge in the sunlight. He feared his own mortality. You would suppose a puritan would be more tranquil about his day of reckoning. "He'll outlast us all."

"Very like he'll outlast you. He has a way of involving his henchmen in lawless games, and standing back when the courts catch and condemn them. He'll weep (briefly) at your execution." Here, Jake was on stronger ground. "He is ruthless, Will."

"All powerful men are ruthless," said Will out of the accumulated experience of fifteen years. "Gentle and civil have not been enough for us. We must hazard a little if we are to gain."

So much for Lord Calhoun. Jake looked pointedly at the new ring on Will's hand, a bulky cameo. "Your first payment?" he asked.

Will showed it to him. "Italian and ancient." He was all storyteller now, excited by romance. "Caesar himself may have worn this."

"Or else Brutus," Jake suggested courteously, "who murdered and meddled in politics to such effect that he died shortly after." He drew in a long breath. The ring smelt faintly, pleasantly, of almonds. "I fear for you," he said in simple honesty.

"I know what I am about."

* * *


	5. 5

* * *

Will sat and pined by the fishpond at Calhoun Hall. Scattered about him on the grass were loose sheets of notes for Lady Grace's masque. He hoped to pass as many of the arrangements as might be onto Ryder. A masque should be all made up of harmony and motion, surely, with as few words as possible, and those, poetry. Will had very few words, (suitable ones), to offer. He would get Jake to petition Finn for fantastical costumes to cover any lack. Jake had been difficult of late and he had been avoiding him, but wheedling Finn was something Jake _could_ do for him. Absentmindedly, he sprawled into a position less poetical but more comfortable.

He could praise the lady's wit - but she had been scorned for meddling in men's affairs.

He could praise her skill with herbs in the still room - but there were those insistent whispers of poison.

He could praise her beauty - and she was beautiful, true, but so _many_ men had called her beautiful - and all of _them_ had fucked her.

He could praise her virtue - but masques do not have jokes.

Furthermore, Lady Bella detested her, and Grace's praise stuck in his craw.

A shadow loomed over his shoulder. "What's this?"

"Master Scout." Will smiled at the boy. He loved Lady Bella as a courtier loves the queen, but he could talk more easily to her younger brother.

* * *

"It is a fact universally acknowledged," Finn used to say, "that giving heed to a patron's interests will lead to due rewards." And thus here they were, currying favour by attending at the house of Lord Calhoun. Jake anticipated an evening of talking spritely, to distract Finn from Will. They were to go to Calhoun Hall as somewhat between guests and retinue. Their duty was to entertain. He had dim hopes of the wit to be heard from the mighty, but the food would be excellent. The great lord did not intend to feed the players, but Jake knew a scullion downstairs, in this pantry. To be honest, he knew an ostler or a turnspit boy in every grand kitchen in town.

Will had concealed a parchment (doubtless a sonnet) in his sleeve, and rustled gently as they handed their nags over to the ostler.

Would Will go touting for a new patron this evening, or would he devote himself to Love? Mistress Lena, Jake's best source within the household, said that Lady Bella was a downright woman who scorned flummery. The sonnet had poor prospects, in Jake's opinion, but nevertheless, Jake led Finn gently by the nose till he had found Calhoun's daughter. There he left him, discoursing fluently of the theatre of the ancient Greeks, and of how they played their plays in worship of the gods. Bella looked restive, and would rather have encountered Burleigh's ward Wriothesley, but Jake was satisfied that she was safe chaperoned. _Who better than his employer's daughter, to benefit from Finn's didactic streak?_

Now Jake's only fear was that Will would approach some likely new master for the company. The chamber held several candidates. As Jake looked around, he saw Will was by Raleigh. That old pirate was unmoved by any of the arts; the only occupation Crodsky could get from him would be pulling an oar across to the new world.

Over by the window stood Walsingham, and Jake dreaded his involvement in their lives far more. Sir Francis was a lover of sermons, true, but more privily he was the suspected instigator of men's sudden disappearances. Jake feared him. He was all eagerness to hear what men said on the street, cash down, and also paid to start a spurious rumour, but the men in his employ were on a tight rein, and Jake distrusted him. The bleakly godly sort were forever trying to run the players, the cockpits, the bowling alleys and all joyful things out of town, but beyond Walsingham's religiosity, Jake thought he had a hollow-eyed and cruel look. He was certainly uninterested in small talk with strolling players, and sent Jake to the rightabout very quickly. Jake watched Will approach him and be sent away as fast.

It was a surprise to see Sir Francis in the house, even though he was connected to Calhoun's friend Lord Burleigh. As the peace party they every day strove to stave off the inevitable war with Spain and keep matters down to a mere mutual ill will. Walsingham, it was said, was all for violence and domination.

* * *

"I saw you speak with Lady Bella between dances," Jake said to Will on their way home. Her father had vetoed the scandalous LaVolta, but she had contrived a pavane with him. Despite the time with his idol, he looked irritable.

"She could only talk of Burleigh's son, new arrived in court. Fresh from his tutor and already groomed for government." Will kicked his nag unnecessarily.

"They say young Cecil's brilliant," Finn contributed. His prentices looked glum.

"They say young Cecil is ugly as sin," snapped Will, "hunchbacked and obsessive."

If Will had half the wit he boasted, he'd make use of Mistress Lena as intelligencer. She'd know if Bella desired a lean and hungry obsessive suitor, or was inclined to a mellow and affable man. _Lord!_ thought Jake, _I do believe she told me this, and now I forget._ "Ugly?" he said aloud. "Then he should be no rival."

"Rival?" Finn was puzzled.

"He's born to privilege. He can do anything. I always dreamed one day I'd be among people like that. For those lords and ladies, anything is possible." Will twisted in his saddle to see the lit windows of the mansion behind them. "I do not belong there."

"How is Robert Cecil your rival?" Finn wanted to know.

Will launched into a babble about excelling, about humanist aspirations, about Love, Life and capitalised absolutes. This kind of talk was meat and drink to Finn.

Jake drew his horse aside from the others and wrapped himself more deeply in his cloak.

* * *

Jake would have come downstairs earlier, but he heard a familiar voice in the innyard. It was Sean McGrail, the Irish traveller, who regularly brought Finn tidings from Galway town. He was talking in Gaelic right now, to Hamish. The Scotch and Irish tongues were close enough to reach out to each other.

For his part, Jake would as soon not meet Sean. He had heard, and heard again to tedium, the tale of great Granuaile, Grace O'Malley, the Irish lady sea trader (_pirate_, thought Jake privately, _and as old as the Queen herself_), and how Her Majesty summoned her to court to be the wonder of all the world. Of how when Granuaile sneezed, a courtier who had been staring as if she were a wild beast, gave her his kerchief; she wiped her nose and hurled the fine linen in the fire. To the courtier's dismay at losing a month's work of his wife in bobbin lace, she had announced that to keep a slimy handkerchief and reuse it was a filthy and barbaric practice.

After laughing (again) at this story, Sean generally coaxed Jake to learn the rules of hurling games, but on this score Jake was resolute. Will and Jake sometimes were drawn into an hour's football with Sean. He was a rough and tumble lad, always welcomed when he visited the players. Finn was immoderately proud of being Irish and delighted by contact with home. ("The Irish are the best in the world with words." "Yes, Master Finn.")

At length Sean departed to find the company master. They always met in privacy, Jake supposed _so they can be Irish together_. Jake thought Will's reverence for Finn not illfounded; if a barbarian Gael could make of himself a notable of dishevelled grandeur with a place in the capital of the world, then surely Jake and Will could re-invent themselves. He had read about Ireland in the book of Gerald of Wales, and been revolted. He and Will had only to ascend from the slums of London to civilisation - a far less dramatic distance.

Jake acknowledged, _Men of London have well founded suspicions of those notEnglish. Notoriously, foreigners are spies, assassins, thieves and villains. Every civil unrest is revealed in hindsight to have begun in scufflings and stone throwings at the Dutch or the French. But Finn has overcome their hatred and forced them to respect him, cajoled them to trust him. Small wonder the Scottish innkeeper courts his advice._

Sean gone, Jake quit his lurking and sailed downstairs, slowly pulling on a pair of gloves, finger by finger. Jake was vain of his hands. Part of his languor was simple tiredness, though. He rubbed his eyes.

"What is it?"

"I slept little last night." He yawned. "Will, the boor, is to blame."

"Aye?" Ham's voice was cool.

"Learning a new part. Another cursed pining girl..." Jake paused, distracted. Like him, the Scottish boy was dressed his best for a day's jaunting. He wore a tilted narrow ruff, Spanish looking, which would have been stylish - ten years ago. Jake hoped his good features would make amends for his poor fashion. Hamish was not tall _no _thought Jake _I am not so besmitten as to name him tall_ but he was a well made man, and his colour was exquisite. _A pity that he neglects to shave._ His stubbled jaw grazed his ruff. Jake's work obliged him to go cleanshaven himself, but he hankered on Ham's behalf for a clipped little beard, neatly surrounding his mouth.

Tomorrow they would be at the house of Burleigh, to view his art collection. Jake had bribed the steward with a free pass to Henslowe's theatre. Jake bounded up. "O God. You must shave." The grandees of the Cecil family might be absorbed in affairs of state, but they were not blind, and it would be discourtesy to visit him - he might _see_ them - looking dishevelled.

Hamish was startled by Jake's sudden plunge back toward the stairs. "I'll do it," Jake said decisively. "I know just how you should look."

Ham was shy of the razor. He followed, slow and whining.

The two of them, together with a bowl of soapy water, sat on the windowseat in Jake's chamber, with the sun falling brightly on Hamish's face. He was silent while Jake scraped carefully. The room smelt of freshly strewn herbs.

The silence drew Jake's fears out of him. He could not stop worrying about the change in climate if Calhoun were replaced as their patron.

"Great lords are not so easy to woo," said Hamish, reaching for a towel.

Jake had arranged as fine a beard as he could on the lad. It looked well; better than Finn's, Jake thought. He said, "If Will is courting patrons, be very sure that some great lord will respond. The theatre has always had another agenda, from the guildmasters' covert meetings under cover of arranging mystery plays to these modern times when lords speak of Art, but hold us as unregarded spies, who bring them tidings from the bearpit, the street, or their rivals' homes. We can pass everywhere, we can dissimulate, and we have trained memories. Lord Calhoun has not exploited us as he could, thank Jesu. Will holds too cheap the value of what he sells."

"A new patron?" Hamish asked, puzzled. "What can that gain him?"

"Ask, rather, what it loses for him; no more the wrath of the company when he assails the modesty of Lord Calhoun's daughter."

Ignoring the fascinated cry of "...assails his _daughter_?" Jake paced across the room and back. "My heroines have been named for that lady this past month," he pointed out broodingly. "And I should be playing boys," he mumbled, aside.

Was that a smirk on Hamish's face?

"I am past ready to be playing men on the stage," he insisted. "I have wheedled lessons in fencing from John Shancke. Burbage himself praised my form." Burbage had said "not bad," but from such a source, to be noticed was praise.

"Can you not fight with swords?" Hamish evidently considered it a basic lifeskill.

"Stage fighting is different," Jake retorted, then admitted, "I can street fight, but that is not permitted on stage; we have to be careful of our fine clothing."

Hamish offered to teach him the use of a Scottish sword, then said, "About the matter of Lady Bella."

"What of it?"

"I had thought..." He trailed off. "You and Crodsky..." He lost his voice again.

"What? What! No!" _Eww._ "We both are prenticed to Master Finn, that is the sum of it." He added primly, "His affections do not tend that way."

Hamish looked happy. "Good."

Jake gave him a thoughtful and not entirely approving look, considering his meaning. _Is this morality or jealousy?_

"Why is it your place to stop Crodsky from making a fool of himself?"

_Could be jealous._

"You could leave the company, if you hate the parts they give you to play," Ham was saying.

"O, yes," Jake agreed dourly. "Travel. Do not suppose it to be all sunshine and easy money. Bad beds, worse weather, truculent yokels, ill-cooked food, thrilling new sicknesses. I have toured England, when plague drove us from town." He shuddered. "I passed a season working as a cowherd, once, when things were bad."

Ham grinned. "You are a man of many talents."

"O, believe it. I learnt a thing or two of how to make it tolerable."

Ham clasped his shoulder. "I do believe it."

* * *


	6. 6

* * *

On the way to Burleigh's house, they passed that of Southampton in Holborn. Liveried attendants swarmed at the door. Hamish got out his sketchpad, a sad affair of playbills stitched together so that he could draw on the blank sides. He was captured by the bustle and colour. He quizzed Jake about whose men these were. They were servants of Essex and of Robert Sidney, Sir Philip's younger brother. That groom waving to Jake worked for Sir Henry Danvers who had been Sidney's page. And lastly, there were Francis Bacon, Anthony Standen and Anthony Rolston, all talking by the mounting block.

"Ha!" said Jake. "You'll not have seen their like among your lochs and glens." The clothes were dazzling, and the men chosen for beauty and strength. Nothing loath, Jake also passed on what he had heard on the streets and in the taverns about these people. The two Anthonies had used Jake to start a public rumour to help Essex pressure an enemy at court. He resented being used like a gull, so he spoke coolly of them. He hoped, incidentally, that the artist's eye was noting the current fashion, and the differences therein from his own garb.

Hamish spent so long taking his pictures of the scenes in Holborn that Jake became parched. He led his friend by way of St Paul's south and over the bridge to Southwark. His favourite tavern was there, full of actors and good conversation.

Robert Armin was in the tavern, singing madrigals for pence for ale to share with John Shancke and William Ecclestone of the Lord Chamberlain's Men. For weeks he had been circling Burbage's company in hopes of a place. "Give it up, Robin," Jake muttered out of the side of his mouth. "They have a Fool, and they're content with his clowning."

Armin concluded a verse before he answered, as quietly, "Kemp? O, he can caper, but there's no music in him. Besides, at any day he might retire to Norwich. I've heard him speak of it."

Armin reeked of insubstantial hopes. Some men would not hear advice. Jake sighed, took his tankards from the maid, and returned to Hamish. The country boy's gaze was flickering about the room, north south east and west. "I had to place the order," Jake said bluntly. "The maid would never have understood your barbarous accent." And why was he snapping at Fleming? It was Armin who had moved him.

An angry flush showed on Fleming's cheekbones. "Better so, than to speak London. Short and sharp as a handful of thrown gravel."

Jake hunched his shoulders, self-conscious. Truth be told, he liked the cadence of Fleming's voice, with its soft lilt and occasional broadened vowels. "We train in elocution - we play at Court, you know, so we must speak clear. I listen to voices much."

That morning, he'd overheard Fleming trying to haggle with the tinker at the door, and it had been piteous when he had been reduced to mime by the cockney's failure to comprehend his dialect. Jake tried, and failed, to suppress a smirk. Fleming saw it, and looked surly.

If things had been other, he would have said, "your voice is like music." But he was not Crodsky, and Hamish was not Lady Bella. "Your voice is well enough," he admitted. "Hah! Are you not a singer?" He knew Ham was musical because of a tedious hour passed coaxing personal secrets from Master Steven Fleming.

The ale had loosened Jake's tongue by the time they left the tavern, not too much, but a little. His fears for Will came on him again. Hamish, his head turning to catch the passing scenes, was not overawed by Jake's hints and mutterings. Darkly, Jake indicated unspoken threats to his fellow apprentice, but even fuddled as he was, could not bring himself to be plain with Hamish.

He did go so far as to whisper to his new friend that Walsingham was mixed up in spywork, and that it was rumoured that he recruited his tricksters and bullyboys from the stage.

Jake glanced upwards. They were now crossing London Bridge from the south side. Hamish's eye vaguely followed Jake's, to the odd, tarred lumps speared on poles above them. First confused, then disbelieving, then appalled, Jake saw him realise what they were; the severed heads of English traitors, here set up to cow the public into respect for authority. A raucous gull alit on one, and Ham looked hastily away, swallowing his fear. _He is but a country lad, after all_, Jake thought.

Here were men who had been mixed up in power games to their cost.

"Walsingham favours actors for the work of spying." Jake said aloud. "We boast a trained memory, the ability to dissemble our true faces, a way of life which brings us in contact with high and low alike, a certain subtlety - did you cough? Bless you."

Hamish waved his concern aside. "Tis nothing."

Jake offered him his pomander to sniff. It was scented with cloves and feverfew, a sure remedy against disease. The apothecary had sworn it.

"Are _you_ a spy?" Ham asked. He did not sound as if he thought it the case.

He was right. "I? No. Never, never, would I trust my life in the hands of Walsingham or Cecil, for that's what it amounts to. I judge them likely to betray the trust of lesser men whene'er it should suit their ends."

Hamish nodded more seriously. "Yet Will trusts them." His tone, when he spoke of Will to Jake, was strange.

"Will trusts... himself. From his days as poor scholar in grammar school, he has been used to excel. He believes that, as a man of parts, he may soar where he wilt."

"The Tudor house have promoted many new men," Hamish said.

Jake sighed. _Another talented dreamer._ Before refreshing themselves in Southwark, Jake had given the promised view of Burleigh's art collection in the Strand. Hamish had stood and stared long and hard at the rich man's pictures, and had left his own sketchings as a gift in exchange. _Sweet country boy, with his scraps of handbills,_ Jake had thought.

Now that they were out of earshot of Burleigh's steward, Jake warned him that Burleigh was an unlikely patron for artists.

"One time," said Jake, "her majesty promised one hundred good pounds to a poet, for his grand work "The Fairy Queen". And it was Lord Burleigh who spoke out against the endowment. He said, Spencer was a hired state messenger, and thus, already paid, and besides, his poem a mere song. "O," saith her highness, "give him then what is reasonable." And Burleigh's "reasonable" was to pay not a shilling."

"Did Spencer get his money?"

"At length. And not from Burleigh," Jake said darkly. "Which was the merchant you said you intended to visit?"

Messr. Fender was not too proud to sell the vulgar instruments, the hautboy, the sackbut, the hurdygurdy, the pipes and tabor. Ham muttered to him, and he drew them into an inner room, where lutes and guitars lay waiting for their masters. Jake looked round, interested. Ham was telling of how he'd learnt the craft of musicianship from a wandering Irish bard, one of the last of a dying breed.

Master Fender handed Hamish a newly finished celtic harp.

Now, Jake enjoyed a merry tune on the virginals as much as any man, but the harp was so passe, and so (how to put this?) unEnglish. It was a celtic music. Hamish tuned the pegs as Jake watched, and the dreadful truth became clear. The signs had been there, and only a wilfully blind optimist would have missed them; the childhood spent north of nowhere, the rural associations, the way he smiled and smiled affably while above his hairline terrible, terrible, shaggy things happened... Hamish was a folk singer. To how many verses was Jake doomed before the song denouement where the heroine got knocked up or the cow died of murrain? Jake had told Ham (both subtly and Not) that he was a sophisticate. If Ham loved him, he would spare him.

_Not love. I'd not think of love. I mean, if he cherished my good opinion._

Hamish neither loved him nor cherished his good opinion. He sang.

The ballad was long and winding, and Jake had ample time to contemplate matters. A dozen or so verses in, his attention dipped into the lyrics, only to find the ballad populated by a whining milkmaid, a wicked landlord, a windmill, and an inadequately comic goat. The tale within the song was taking forever to be resolved, because the quatrains kept being punctuated by, "with a fa la la and a hey nonny no." There would be retribution for this, Jake vowed.

Meantime, he brooded. For instance, how had Hamish paid for the harp? He had seen no coin passing between him and Master Fender, and how, by the by, did a boy fresh to the city know who was, or was not, a reputable supplier of musicians? He thought he had seen a scrap of something pale (papers?) pass from Messr. Fender into Hamish's hand with the harp. That hulking blond apprentice in the outer room - had Jake not seen him earlier, talking rapidly in the Scottish tongue, or Welsh, to Sean and Hamish at the back door? Finn, who Jake saw recognise him (and Finn did Not look happy to see the boy) had called the other two away swiftly before Jake found out who he was. At the time, Jake had been too proud to appear jealous of Ham's friends, but now, he wondered.

He returned his cursory attention to the song. The goat had gotten into the windmill and was eating the corn. It was all very rollicking. Jake sighed.

He hated intelligencing. He was not a natural spy. Yes, he knew most of what was toward in the city, but he kept his ears open. It gave a sense of control over his world. To put his intelligence to use would mean collaboration, and Jake trusted no one.

_An Irish harp, Fender said. Sean, Finn, both Irish, both anxious not to be connected. It might mean nothing. And Walsingham in the picture._ Jake's unhappiness was not all musical pain. _It would be full dangerous to assume it meant nothing, with the Spymaster present and active._

They disturbed a prowling cat on the way back into the inn late that night, and it yowled piercingly. Jake made a warding sign against evil. _Who knows who feeds the cursed animal? It could be a familiar._ Then, he stumbled over a bowl of milk set outside the door for the neighbours.

"Stop." Hamish moved surely into the kitchen even by starlight. His search of the pantry did not disturb the turnspit dog; clearly he had a longstanding habit of midnight snacking. He brought Jake bread and cheese and weak ale. Jake fell on it like a wolf, and when he looked up, Hamish was staring at him as if he were truly a poor vagabond player. _O. My elbows were flying there, and now I'm hunched over the plate as if I feared it would be snatched away. Not so courtly now, Pratt._ Jake sat back and ate slower.

* * *


	7. 7

* * *

The morning of the wedding, the sun shone bright and chill. The trees put forth buds, a good omen for the couple. The unfurling leaves were the glaring green of early spring.

The company had high hopes of the feast ahead. Insider reports from the Banks' pantry listed roast venison, a whole sturgeon, a jelly in the shape of a swan, a plenitude of quails, comfits and last year's pippins. Jake saw Sean had joined them unofficially. Well, the poor lad would fill his stomach today. He himself was rejoicing at the thought of odious Kyle Stretton being tied for life to that strumpet. He coaxed his nag up beside the brooding Will. "Haste to the wedding, eh, Will."

"_The Lord shall root out all deceitful lips: and the tongue that speaketh proud things._"

Jake cleared his throat. Will had been a gloomy owl about this day ever since finding that Lady Bella would be present to hear his verses praising her rival. "They are very _bad_ couplets you wrote," he comforted pleadingly.

Will would not be comforted, but continued to mutter psalms. "_Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners: and hath not sat in the seat of the scornful_."

Jake rode to the wedding in a more chastened silence.

Will unbent when they reached the Banks' manor. Master Scout ran up to his horse like a puppy hoping for a walk, all exuberance and open love. Breathless and exclamatory, Scout informed Will that this would be his last great holiday as a baby. Soon, "my lord my father" would be setting him to a tutor, like a big boy. "Already I am so tall!" he announced untruthfully.

Once upon a time, Will would have been bitter that everything was arranged so easily for Scout. He himself had had to sweat, cheat and steal to learn his letters, and he still begrudged great men their luxury. But Scout was a child, the worshipping little brother he had never had, and so he only envied the tutor. Will set a high value on education.

He was extracting promises from Scout, that he would study so hard that he would exceed even the expectations his lord his father had of him, when Jake tapped Will on the shoulder.

"Will."

"What is it?"

"Sean is sneaking off to the kitchens already. Come with me; let's bring him back."

Will shook his head. Sean had come for hunger's sake, and he was not the man to stop him. That aside, Sean's dancing, if he _were_ induced to perform with the rest, would not reflect much glory on the company.

The masque was abominable. Finn had decided in favour of Ryder's nonsense. Will took a grim pleasure from the guests' inattention. They played during the feast, after the ceremony. _His_ entertainment would have held them from their plates. At it was, Grace's praises were drowned out by a great chewing, gnawing, gnashing and gulping. The show was loud and shiny enough to impress only the most sheltered.

Jake, outfitted in canvas as Master Finn's conception of a leviathan, pursued the shipwrecked mariner with unleviathanlike gusto across the hall. There was a squeak of sheer terror from beside the servingmaid's entrance. A turnspit child, eyes as wide as they could go, was shakily stepping forward to "rescue" the threatened mariner. The mariner (Finn, his rumpled style of attractiveness at last artistically validated) looked startled for a fleeting moment. Scout, who like the servants watched the show hid from the adult lords and ladies, put a hand on the other child to stop him. He reassured, "You need fear naught. It is all in your head." Jake supposed it was as good a definition of fiction as any.

Will slipped away after the performance. The household, guests, hosts, and servants, were in the gardens where comfits and suckets and sweet stuffs were laid out in a banqueting place. The trees were hung with lanterns, and later they would dance.

"It is soothing to be alone," Will whispered to himself.

He was not alone; Jake had followed him.

He ran his finger along the wainscot. It was fine carpentry work. The music of the Waits was scarcely audible, here in the quiet hallway. Jake's voice was unwelcome to him. "You are a sullen fool," Jake said.

"You do not understand."

"Your feud with Ryder-" Jake broke off. Both of them had heard the most horrible sound, like a cat being tormented.

"This way, but quietly." Will went first.

Jake and Will rushed into a room overlooking the gardens, and stopped short. The sound was Sean. He lay across the table, a handle - _no, a hilt, dear God_, protruding from his belly. He whined at every breath. He seemed not to have strength to do more.

"Sean, what, what can I do for you? Wait, wait, I'll call a physician. We'll help-" Jake turned to Will, his adam's apple bobbing convulsively.

Will brushed him aside. The injury looked mortal, and he'd wager Sean knew it as well as they. "Who did this, Sean?" They had no time to waste on pretence.

"Grace Banks. She caught me - she hurt-"

Jake found a buffet with wines at the side of the room. He passed Will a glass and Will drizzled hippocras onto Sean's lips.

"Must tell, must warn."

"Warn who, Sean?" Jake's brows drew together.

"She asked, my London contact. I couldn't help, I told her."

"Warn who, Sean?" There were other, lesser, hurts, including a bump on his crown which must have staggered him earlier, but the stab in the gut was going to kill him.

"Finn."

"Finn." Jake looked at Will, dazed. Will was angry, worried, frightened, yes, but not surprised. Sean was choking on the spiced wine. _Poor boy. Poor, misguided lad._

"I'll take the knife out now, Sean."

Will whispered some blessing or prayer - Jake couldn't hear - and withdrew the blade. Sean died in a spurt of blood. _Too quickly. Too soon._ Shocked, trying to take in what had happened, Jake stepped away sharply. He stared out the window; Will stared at Sean.

This had silenced both.

Jake croaked, "I see Lady Grace." Her bridal hair hanging loose in chestnut swathes over her shoulders, a wreath of delicate flowers crowning her, she was being escorted past gooseberry bushes by the distinctive figure of Burleigh's son, the stranger lord with the posture of an old man and the face of a young. Will strode over and watched them too. _Dear Jesu,_ thought Jake. _Walsingham and Burleigh are the _peace_ party. God preserve us, then, from the bloodthirst of the warmongers._ "Will," he said, "You cannot go down there."

"Can I not."

"You are covered in blood," Jake said, uninflected.

Will came to himself again. "I must find Finn."

Jake scanned the paths. He could not see the company master.

"If we cannot find Finn, then Calhoun. He can protect him."

That was a good thought. Calhoun and his daughter were in a secluded nook on the edge of the grounds. Will could approach without being seen by other guests.

When they got close, they could hear Calhoun and his daughter, hidden by a bank of imported yellow foxgloves.

"God's death, father, he is the best tutor Scout could have. Scout trusts and respects him..."

"I like not the way he looks at you."

"God's blood." She called on God often in her speech.

"Bella. I do not like these terms in your mouth."

"The Queen uses these oaths."

"The Queen is the Queen," Calhoun said unanswerably.

At any rate, Bella abandoned the topic of her speech patterns, and resumed, "Young Crodsky values education with a passion."

"Hast thou held so much converse with the boy?"

Bella hesitated between yes, (damning), and no, (invalidating her argument). "I see in him an upright influence on my innocent sibling."

Calhoun smiled at her uncharacteristic primness.

"Scout tells me - oh, God."

"Sir, Madam." Will was a sight to frighten soldiers. "Finn is in trouble."

"Is that Finn's blood?"

Will shook his head. "Sean's. He implicated Finn as a spy to Lady Grace, and possibly to young Cecil before he died."

Bella sat down abruptly, acutely distressed, in need of a paladin. Her father paced off, grim and silent, but Will gave her a look of comfort, fumbling about his person for something to distract her. Like Jake, he had concealed a mess of delicacies from the pantry for later. He came up with a handful of spiced redhot sweetmeats.

Jake eyed the couple narrowly. There was much he had not been told.

* * *


	8. 8

* * *

Getting away from the manor was anticlimactic. There was no challenge, no fighting, only, Finn was not with them. Nor was he at the inn when they reached home. 

An awkwardness grew between Will and Jake. Will refused to answer any of Jake's questions, (he had many, some about Finn's secret work, some about Will and Bella) or even, after a couple of days, to acknowledge them. Every night, Will left the inn and was gone till morning, searching alleys and taverns, asking for news of his acquaintances and contacts. Will even knew the whereabouts of the first house that had sheltered Finn in London. Finn had led him there. Jake had not known how close they were.

Three days after the wedding, Will brought Jake a letter he had found among Finn's goods. It was addressed to both apprentices. Jake, he urged to find a place with Henslowe or Alleyn, the two chief playmasters. He praised Jake's talent for mimicing all types of person in the town, but asked him to put his faith a little in other people if he was ever to use his talents fully. Will's message was on a separate sheet, and he did not share it.

Will was exhausted and losing weight. Jake wondered if Will remembered Sean's death every time he looked at Jake. The reverse was true.

He did demand that Will resign from Walsingham's employ. Will told him that he had sent back the Italian ring but heard nothing in return. Walsingham was sick, it was said.

Jake also searched for Finn, with as little success as Will. The company was fraying, members leaving for whatever secure place they could find. They had not performed a play in days.

Calhoun sent Jake in livery to Lord Burleigh with a sealed letter. Burleigh was Calhoun's most powerful friend, and had a spy network which included Walsingham as an underling. Whatever he knew, Jake doubted he'd tell. Crooked Cecil, Grace's escort, was his only son.

Waiting for Burleigh to read through the letter, Jake looked casually at his desk. Sketches he recognised, of the Southampton set, fixed his attention. There were other images in the same hand, but upside down in relation to him. Burleigh caught him craning his neck and dismissed him sharply.

Two days later and much the worse for sleepless nights, Jake heard that Sir Francis was dead. The Walsingham household had a blessedly stagestruck cook. Jake was encouraging her to buy him a pint - he needed to keep his spirits up - when she confided that it was not seemly, really, for her to be in a tavern, with the master dead this morning. Jake urged her to a corner out of the drafts and other gossips for a minute's comfort, and questioned her anxiously. All of the household were to attend the funeral that very night, in St Paul's church. No kin or friends would have time to journey in from beyond London town. "How hasty. How... private," said Jake. _Shifty,_ he thought. The cook, defensive, said that outward pomp would be unfitting for so godly a man. Jake was reminded that while Walsingham's trade had been worldly, his religion was not. He spoke words of comfort to the wench and he drank her ale.

So. Walsingham's house would be deserted for one night. Here was Will's chance, if he but knew it, to recover any documents that linked him to Sir Francis. Will, Jake told himself mournfully, was a man with a future. Soon he would be living in Calhoun Hall, cheek by jowl with his ideal woman.

Unlike Will, unlike the other refugees, Jake was one of the core company who had no other options, not ones he would take willingly. Acting was his best hope, and London was due for a glut of actors when Calhoun's Men dispersed. He hung on, and waited, for he knew not what. He might be drawn in and accused of Irishness, for all he knew. He feared. He pitied Jacob Pratt sincerely over an ale he had bought himself.

Of course, he had nothing to lose.

_He_ could go and fetch the papers. He owed Will nothing. (Will had been vile to live with lately.) _But that goes to show how heroic it would be._ He pictured himself throwing the papers in Will's face, with choice remarks about people who didn't tell people the truth about other people.

He was not in a sufficiently Christopher Marlowe frame of mind to compose very good choice remarks. He went out and dipped his face in the chill rainwater of a horse drinking trough.

The house would still be empty. Drunk, partly on ale but mostly on the beauty of his own despair and nobility, Jake set out for Walsingham's house in a state of altruism and bravado.

And afterward, what else? Jake's plan was to run. To get out of there. _They_ (unspecified but menacing authorities) were not going to let him continue quietly with his life.

* * *

Furtively, silently, Jake pushed open the door onto a scene of disarray beyond any spring cleaning he had ever seen. He was not the first one here. A tall figure in dark clothing stood over the chests and desk in Sir Francis' study, overhanded swings bringing an axe down over and over to reduce the wood to kindling. Like Jake, he clearly expected hidden drawers in the thing. Jake stared - it was Hamish. Jake had no idea why in God's name he was here. What he was doing was clear. A linenfold panel Jake would never have picked out hung open, the door to a hidden cupboard. The cupboard had been ravished of all its contents. 

Ham was ripping papers out from among the shards of walnut and packing them in a hempen sack to take away. But where? Whose shilling had he taken?

Jake's mind's eye flashed back to Burleigh's desk covered with Ham's sketches of the courtiers allied with Essex.

Hamish was in the pay of the Cecils, and had been so all along.

_Sweet Jesu._ Jake felt a black wave of shame sweep over him. All this time, he had been condescending to Ham as a simple, little, country boy. What must he have thought of Jake's swaggering and ruffling it as a Man of the Town. He had not even (crowing peacock that he was) had the worldliness to look at a stranger unprejudiced.

He stood frozen. He wanted to flee his life, and become a new person. He could go to Plymouth and join the frowning puritans in the new world.

Mentally, he was wildly cramming his goods and gear into Finn's second-best satchel when Ham's head jerked up, the better to stare at him in the shadowed doorway. "Close the door behind you," he ordered.

He was right. Even now in the candlelit church, the reversed torches were probably being doused as the coffin was lowered. Soon the mourners would be back. Jake glanced once over his shoulder and obeyed. "I'm here for Will."

"Aye. He was Walsingham's man."

"You found his name." _O, thank God._ "He's repented of his word."

Ham shook his head. "I've not had time to go over these papers."

"You can, though." Jake said eagerly, "Before you pass them to Burleigh. You can take out references to Crodsky. He had not-" Jake paused for a way to put it, delicate, not to offend another agent. _Ham is an agent! Nay, I cannot believe it._ "He had not run any errands for the spymaster yet."

Ham had returned to his search of the room. "Come and help," he said.

"What?"

"You have told me before what fine agents actors make; now, come and help."

"You are getting old letters back, not lifting the State out of true," Jake said recklessly. He supposed a minister of the crown was the best heir of Walsingham's doings. A jewel rolling on the floor caught the moonlight and he picked it up.

"Papers," Hamish emphasised, rolling a map into a scroll.

"It's a poison ring." Jake plucked at the edge of the cameo until the hinge gave and the hollow was revealed. When he sniffed, it smelt of almonds. "Italian. Have you checked his bedchamber?"

Hamish looked blankly at him across the ravaged study.

"Sir Francis was the biggest gull for folk remedies in London. He took to his bed in season and out. His work was done from there, these last weeks."

Ham nodded, shouldered his sack of papers, and followed him, absently tucking a decryption key in his sleeve. "Where is Will?"

"Out on the streets, looking for Finn."

"Finn is dead. His body will be found soon."

Jake shuddered. He had feared for Finn, but the confirmation shook him.

Hamish lifted the latch to Walsingham's own room, and slid in, checking the window (there was a filbert tree within reach with good climbable branches) while Jake stood slack jawed. He looked round impatiently. The room was a treasurehouse of herbal remedies but otherwise unpromising.

Jake recovered while Ham tore the chests and cupboards apart. He hauled back the bed curtains and ran a hand under the feather bolster. Walsingham had kept a knife there. He no longer needed it; Jake slipped it into his belt. Also, he found some unmedical documents sifted through the recepts for ague and plague by the bed. "Finn watched the court for the Gaelic Irish beyond the Pale," he guessed.

"Yes." Ham was leafing rapidly through a household accounts book. After a moment, he added it to his sack and started tapping the walls. The chests and cupboards in the room, which now hung open, were ransacked.

"And you? Who are your masters?"

Hamish bent to look under the bed. Jake already knew he would only find the necessary there. _He treats me as if I were not a threat. He must despise me. _Jake hated that.

"I am from Scotland."

_You are from James VI. Of course _Jake thought, _the Cecils would open negotiations with the next monarch. The Queen is old and waning, and the Cecils take the long view in politics._

"Soon," Hamish said in answer to his thought, "England and Scotland will share a monarch."

_Do not dismiss her majesty so carelessly._ "Yes." Hamish had still not looked in his direction. _Contempt._ To think of the hours Jake had spent straining for Hamish's attention and approval. "Is this what you are looking for?" Jake held up his sheaf of papers fanned between finger and thumb.

"What are they?"

"Lists of names, and amounts paid. Who is Doctor Lopez?"

Hamish looked dangerously intent.

Jake concealed his nervousness. He could play the part of a fearless roaring boy. He was an actor born. "I want Will out of this."

"Done. That, I already meant to arrange." Hamish twitched the papers out of his hand and swung the sack over his shoulder, full now. "We have lingered too long."

Outside, a link boy lit the mourners home along the lane from St Paul's Church.

"Out the window and down the tree?" suggested Jake.

"Down the stairs and out by the garden gate."

When they got outside, they ran. A half mile away, breathless in the lee of a bowling alley, Jake's heart thumped hard. Being able to move had raised his spirits; he would have welcomed a fight in this mood.

"Where did you find the list of agents?"

It had been by the bed sifted among medical receipts for the regulation of choler. Jake ignored the question. "What is your plan now?"

"To get out of here is the plan. Report to Cecil, then back north. They're not going to let me live quietly after this. And you?"

That, Jake did not know. Finn's death would break up the company. He could act (maybe Henslowe would hire him) and herd cows, and had various gifts he could turn to account. "Finn is truly dead?"

"I saw him laid low by Southampton's hireling. Will you come north with me?"

"Jesus, why?"

Hamish shrugged. "You showed me London."

Jacob gave him a hard stare.

"You were a help tonight. And you showed Crodsky loyalty since I have known you. You are a good friend. For long, I had thought you Crodsky's Ganymede."

Jake was all surprise that he should think that, or even know the term. "A ganymede is a, a-"

"Catamite." Yes, Hamish did know the term.

"He was cupbearer to the gods, and beloved of Jupiter." Somehow, Jake had picked up Will's habit of sharing his education _gratis._

"An honourable estate." Ham's forefinger grazed his collarbone through a layer of broadcloth doublet.

Jake shook the finger off and glared like a cat. "You see yourself as Jupiter?"

"No."

Jake relaxed. He had won this bout of conversation.

"But I would have you worship me."

Jake took the challenge and challenged back indignantly. "What, on my knees?"

Hamish clasped his face between both hands and kissed his mouth.

Jake arched away from him. "That was not an offer."

"Oh." Hamish looked chopfallen, though not so much so as he would if Jake had not kissed back. "A basis for negotiation maybe?"

Jake edged away, thinking of his barren prospects. He was on poor ground to negotiate anything, with the company's imminent demise, Will off to tutor Master Scout, and always more actors in London than there were places. "What will you do now?"

"North. I think I will work my way as a peddler and sell knots of ribbon and kitchen spices to farmsteads on my way. You'd make a fine huckster, sweetheart." He smiled teasingly.

"And then, Scotland. Spy." Just to be clear about that.

"No, I am a courier only. I report to my king and take his orders."

"A foreign king." Jake had witnessed executions. He had heard the cry, "behold, the heart of a traitor," while a twitching piece of offal was held high.

"He is old Elizabeth's heir. When she is gone, he will rule your country, too. He is not plotting to hurt her - no need. He is scarcely older than we two. He has all the time in the world for his designs."

Jaw dropping, Jake stared at him as if he were a monster out of John Mandeville's book. All this while, Jake had thought he knew Hamish, that they were becoming friends, and all this time Ham had been keeping so great a secret from him. It was not a secret Ham could have shared with an Englishman, Jake knew that, yet still, he felt betrayed. All this time, he had not seen the real Hamish at all.

This situation was intolerable. He fled, stumbling, back to the inn, back to the inn run by the Flemings. He had nowhere to go that was not Hamish's territory, and no useful options or levers to use. Unless he was willing to betray the boy, and now he realised that he was not so willing.

It was a sleepless night that followed, passed alone in the stable loft. No matter how he stoked his anger, he still wanted to be Hamish's friend; trying to impress him, stealing glances at him, mocking his outre accent. He was as honourable a man as Jake, if one remembered he was an honourable Scotsman. He was a stranger, but Jake knew one of his faces already.

When dawn coloured the east a sickly tint, Jake stood, brushed a wisp of straw from his rump, and stalked to the bolthole under the stairs where Ham slept. He rapped sharply on the wood.

He was not certain what words he would use, but he had hopes of kissing.

* * *

END

notes: sorry for the boring element of this - I wanted to see if I could write this a bit "period," and the sentences got rather clunky.


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